Searching Weekly Analysis
Searching Weekly Analysis
Note to self, must fix the search engine on the Rethink website. We just put in “Magine” to see the last time we covered the Swedish OTT video start up and instead it brought up every instance of the world “imagine” including all those stories of the re-invented transmission specialist that used to be Harris Broadcast, but which is now thriving as Imagine Communications. Perhaps it is this search engine foible or maybe it is the general lack of enthusiasm for what’s happening in European OTT, but most US readers don’t know much about Magine TV. It is quite simple, but it bears comparison with both Hulu Plus and a kind of video Spotify, in that it offers live TV…
The deal announced this week between iPass and Devicescape was a blow for common sense and genuinely creates a potential partner for any business that needs fast reliable access to WiFi. That makes it a first point of call for WiFi First MVNO style deals, as well as enterprise customers. Both companies try to make a large number of WiFi hotspots available to a common customer base, in Devicescape’s case it was mostly Free WiFi hotspots which are either free or open, and for iPass it was more a case of collecting together sites which require some payment, but which would negotiate for a bulk deal with iPass. This is great for mobile offload and a recent deal illustrates this,…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances B+B SmartWorx will be deploying PrismTech’s Vortex data sharing platform on its next generation of industrial IoT gateways. Delphi is acquiring Ottomatika, a spinoff from the Carnegie Melon University that supplied the software that powered Delphi’s self-driving Audi earlier this year on its trip across the USA. Zebra has acquired ITR Mobility, a mobile software development firm, and has been picked by Mainfreight for 1,500 of its TC75 mobile devices for barcode asset management. Qualcomm is buying Ikanos for $47m, snapping up an established home gateway business, as a potential lever for its AllJoyn-based smart home ambitions. Universal Electronics is acquiring Ecolink, a wireless security, sensing and home automation business. Software GE is officially launching its Predix…
Inside Secure has released what it says is the world’s smallest Transport Layer Security (TLS) software implementation, the MatrixSSL (Secure Sockets Layer) Tiny. The new open source embedded SSL is designed for small footprint applications and devices, this allows companies to reduce costs when securing IoT devices with stringent memory requirements – such as those with less than 10KB flash and 600 bytes of RAM, providing less than 50KB of code means less places for bugs to hide. MatrixSSL was developed in 2004 by PeerSec Networks, which was then acquired by Inside Secure. Its implementation is written in portable C source code and is designed for custom applications in embedded hardware environments. PeerSec Networks stated that before it developed its…
In a deal that has looked certain for a few weeks now, a consortium of German automakers have acquired Nokia’s Here mapping division for €2.8bn, or roughly $3.05bn. The group, formed by Audi, BMW and Mercedes (Daimler), beat out interest from other parties, notably Chinese internet-giant Baidu and Uber, to buy the unit – which will likely form the basis of the consortium’s autonomous car ambitions. High quality maps are obviously very important for self-driving vehicles, and have an equally practical use as part of the regular navigation systems used by drivers today. By purchasing a well-regarded operation like Here, the consortium secures a service that is independent of Google’s maps – a company that also has self-driving car ambitions.…
GE has announced that its Predix software platform will launch in a cloud implementation next year, transitioning the Predix data analytics and machine learning capabilities from private clouds into a GE-controlled cloud service. Beginning in the fourth quarter of this year, current GE users of Predix will begin migrating their deployments to the Predix Cloud, with the full platform available to external customers in 2016. Predix will be using Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry to enable application development, deployment and operations. Pivotal is a joint venture between EMC, VMware and GE, and Cloud Foundry itself is an open source computing PaaS that was initially developed by VMware but is now solely owned by Pivotal. The PaaS software will be able to run…
M&A, Strategies, Alliances Cumulocity and Micro Technology have launched the CUMoNoSU joint venture in Japan, a SaaS cloud-offering that aims to kick start Japanese business deployments and developments. Ecovent has won $6.9m in funding to continue work on its connected air vents, with investment led by Emerson, and the goal of launching the vents this year. Philips has joined the AllSeen Alliance, as a premier member. BearingPoint and relayr have partnered to form the relayr alliance, to pair their consultancy expertise. ams has acquired NXP’s CMOS sensor business, as the company aims to expand its environmental sensing portfolio. Qualcomm has signed a deal with Brusa, with the Swiss automotive component company licensing Qualcomm’s Halo wireless electric vehicle charging technology. Delphi…
Freescale’s QorIQ processors are finding their way into every part of the network from backbone to device. The latest family member targets the network edge, an increasingly strategic area where operators and standards bodies believe much of the intelligence will be located as devices proliferate and become highly distributed. It is designed to support emerging CPE designs incorporating virtualization, as well as industrial control systems. The latest additions to the QorIQ-based LayerScape range are the LS1088A octacore and LS1048A quad-core processors, both based on ARM’s 64-bit Cortex-A53 design. Matt Short, senior QorIQ product engineer, told EETimes that the new products have been specifically designed for intelligent edge access equipment; NFV (Network Function Virtualization) and virtual CPE solutions; industrial control systems;…
This week, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) announced several new members, including big names IBM, Inside Secure and National Instruments, as well as a few lesser-known additions to the group from around the globe – including Taiwanese silicon vendors TA-I, Kookmin University in South Korea and South African engineering company Micosa. The OIC, launched by Intel, Samsung and Broadcom, is constructing an open source framework to wirelessly connect technologies and regulate the stream of information between the billions of devices comprising the IoT. The framework is called IoTivity, but we had anticipated it being released by now. Direct rival AllJoyn has already made it to market, but from the outside, it looks like the OIC is lagging behind the Qualcomm…
Windows 10 duly got its official launch this week, in an event which reflected the critical importance of the operating system to Microsoft – but was light on the mobile vision which will be essential to its success. In the age of open source and cloud services, Microsoft has a significant challenge to keep an old-fashioned OS relevant, even if it makes it free to most consumers and partners over time. CEO Satya Nadella has robust fallback plans, notably to deliver key applications from the cloud to any OS, but he has one last chance to control the end user experience via a new take on Windows. That relies heavily on the OS being able to run on all kinds…
Each architecture shift brings the opportunity for a new supplier to break into the service provider ecosystem, and even to dislodge an incumbent. The convergence of networks and IT, both in technical and organizational terms, has introduced IBM, Oracle and others to the heart of carrier activities. Small cell HetNets may increase the punching weight of currently minor RAN providers like Samsung and NEC (the European Commission clearly thinks so, based on its reasons for green-lighting the Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent merger). Cloud-RAN could push Intel-driven platforms into the access network. And increasingly, what will hold all these developments together will be software defined networking (SDN), which is seen by enterprise infrastructure heavyweights as a way to increase their carrier business, and perhaps…
Reports surfaced this week that Nokia Technologies was preparing to unveil a virtual reality project, but few would have predicted the launch of Ozo – a camera for content creators looking to produce VR content with 360° audio and video. Make no mistake, this is not a consumer device – when Ozo is launched in the fall, it will come with an anticipated price tag in the mid-five-figures. But it firmly stakes Nokia’s claim, even after divesting its handset arm, to continue to be a mobile R&D powerhouse, moving the goalposts in a VR segment in which several of its former rivals, such as HTC, have been developing devices in the hope of sparking new revenue streams. Launches like Ozo…
The SIM card has been the key instrument of the mobile operator’s power for so long that it is hard to underestimate the impact of the switch to new open SIMs. But that is now on the horizon, with the GSMA forecasting that cards based on its embedded SIM specifications will be on the market next year. The GSMA said earlier this month: “With the majority of operators on board, the plan is to finalise the technical architecture that will be used in the development of an end-to-end remote SIM solution for consumer devices, with delivery anticipated by 2016.” Long supported by Apple, Google and others, an embedded SIM card – which allows the user to move between operators without…
A week after Nokia’s acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent was approved by the European Commission, the two companies both reported stronger results. Their timing seemed, for once, perfect, with a marriage now almost certain to take place, and against a backdrop of improving fortunes in network infrastructure (Ericsson also turned in better than expected revenues for the second quarter, while Huawei enjoyed its most impressive sales growth for five years). Unlike the painful mergers that created ALU and Nokia Siemens in 2006/2007, this deal may be one created from a position of strength and recovery, not desperation. But is that view, which is currently bolstering the two firms’ share prices, really tenable? An improving economic climate, and a new wave of carrier…
The US mobile operators are facing a critical turning point – one which many MNOs in developed markets will also face in the coming two years. Their traditional business models are collapsing, with the end of handset subsidies and device lock-ins, and the saturation of the postpaid smartphone base. Handset makers will increasingly sell directly to consumers (see separate item below), which also means the operators will lose their control of the software platform and user experience. At the same time, they are facing a second wave of intense network build-out, densifying their LTE networks in order to maintain a strong quality of experience (now the number one reason to choose, or leave, a network, according to Verizon, rather than…
A company the size of IBM can easily be forgiven for having so many of its fingers in this many pies at once, and this week the technology giant is showing no letup in its need for extra digits – as it launches IBM developerWorks Recipes. The program is designed to easily allow developers of all abilities to connect their IoT devices to the cloud, and to then use the data that those devices have transmitted. Conveniently, IBM happens to have a pretty successful cloud platform called Bluemix, which it launched last year following a six-month beta process. The developerWorks Recipes use Bluemix to provide tutorials for embedding analytics and machine learning capabilities into their devices and applications, leveraging Bluemix’s…
Last week was an eventful one for the automotive industry and, as a result, the development of Intel and BlackBerry’s QNX collaboration on IoT for automobiles took something of a backseat. Intel and QNX Software Systems have been partners for over 30 years, since QNX began life as a real-time OS (RTOS), but the new venture will see them explore uncharted territory – developing dashboard functionality, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems, digital instrument clusters and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), with a focus on IoT. QNX has been in the automotive game for some time and its open standard software running on Intel’s IoT platform will form the basis of these new products. This includes the QNX Neutrino RTOS; a powerful…
With Sigfox and LoRa the current big-names in the Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) space, companies looking to embrace the IoT networking technologies can now (fairly simply) go out and set one up. As it stands, doing so would currently tie that customer into the ecosystem of one the two leaders, as both technologies use proprietary IP. For many businesses, this isn’t an issue in the slightest – it’s almost a fact of life. But there will always be a market for the open standard implementation, and while it might not be as big as the proprietary alternatives (think of Linux vs. Windows in terms of PC share), the open standards often fill a practical, and sometimes political, purpose.…
Just a few days into this week AT&T declared its agreement with the FCC over the terms of its DirecTV acquisition – and Faultline reached another landmark moment, because back in May 2014 we exclusively predicted that this deal was likely to gain approval, and that the Comcast Time Warner Cable deal would fail, leading to Charter Communications merging with it instead. That was quite a series of calls, but they were based purely and simply on what would happen to the US broadband market in the events of those mergers, and clearly people at the Justice Department and the FCC, agreed with us. We argued that from a US customer point of view broadband does not go up in…
This week, the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) announced several new members, including big names IBM, Inside Secure and National Instruments, as well as a few lesser-known additions to the group from around the globe – including Taiwanese silicon vendors TA-I, Kookmin University in South Korea and South African engineering company Micosa. The OIC, launched by Intel, Samsung and Broadcom, is constructing an open source framework to wirelessly connect technologies and regulate the stream of information between the billions of devices comprising the IoT. The framework is called IoTivity, but we had anticipated it being released by now. Direct rival AllJoyn has already made it to market, but from the outside, it looks like the OIC is lagging behind the Qualcomm…